McCaffery: Vick continues to run into obstacles

Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Steve McLendon, right, strips the ball from Eagles quarterback Michael Vick as he hits him in the third quarter of a game on Sunday. The Eagles recovered the fumble, but the Steelers won 16-14. (AP Photo/Don Wright)

PITTSBURGH ­­— Ever evasive, still fast, eternally willing, Michael Vick has had one damaging professional trait: Always, it seems, he will run into something jarring.

Often, it’s a tackler.

Sunday, it was this reality: His turnover problem, which has haunted him since Opening Day, evidently has no easy-access solution.

“I wish I could tell you,” Vick said Sunday, trying to explain his two lost fumbles after the Eagles’ 16-14 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. “But I don’t have any explanation.”

Through five weeks, Vick has made 11 turnovers — and nearly as many equally valuable contributions. But unlike when the Birds won in Cleveland in Week 1 and he acknowledged relief from the reality that he’d just avoided the bulk of the blame, Vick had no such reprieve Sunday.

Advertisement

He knew he’d lost a first-quarter fumble inside the Pittsburgh three. He knew he’d lost one later, in his own territory. He knew that in a two-point game, that was the difference, no matter how many share-the-blame hands had been raised in the locker room.

For whether it meant anything or not, not even Andy Reid would come running afterward with a monotone promise to put his quarterback in a better position to make plays. Because after his quarterback’s six-interception, five-lost-fumble start to what is now a 3-2 season, Reid, too, must be low on that promise account.

“He didn’t want to come in and fumble the ball,” Reid said. “That’s not what he did. He tried to make plays and they hit the ball and knocked it out of his hands.”

Such was the mechanical explanation for Vick’s troubles Sunday — that the Steelers were successful in jack-hammering the ball from his grasp. Where it should haunt the Eagles, though, is that Vick’s aggressive style invites such defensive tactics, and since the Steelers were so successful at them Sunday, the league-wide trend can only balloon.

Yet Vick, always in character, dismissed the possible connection between his aggressiveness and his ultimately empty hands.

“No, that’s been my style,” Vick said. “And I never had a problem with fumbling before. It was one of those things. Everything happens for a reason. It was meant to be to fumble the ball on the goal line. I have no explanation for it.”

There was a certain early dampness in Heinz Field, and that later became a drizzle. That might have been a useful teaching point about the fumbling. But Vick, as he will, chose instead to absorb the hits, in the game and afterward.

“I mean, it’s football,” he said. “Things happen. I wish I could take back the fumble on the goal line, but I can’t. Ultimately, we put ourselves in position to win this game, but we didn’t win.”

The Birds did that and Vick, as he had three times this season, responded with what could have been a fourth signature fourth-quarter scoring effort, a 17-play, 79-yard, 8-minute-18-second demonstration of football excellence accessorized by Brent Celek’s two-yard TD reception. That, though, gave the Eagles just a 14-13 lead with 6:33 left, meaning it was Ben Roethlisberger’s turn lead the game-winning drive.

“I want to be humble, but we felt like we could drive on them,” said LeSean McCoy, as the postgame conversation kept bumping back toward the early, goal-line turnover. “At the beginning of the game, we were driving. But that kind of changed the game a little bit.”

The game changed, but the quarterback won’t — at least not according to Reid’s postgame hints. Sunday, Vick was 20-for-30 for 175 yards, two touchdowns and a 104.2 rating — substantially higher than Roethlisberger’s 72.7.

Except …

“He got the ball knocked out,” Reid said. “I’ll be the first one to tell you that. We fixed it in the second half. The first half is where we have to take care of the football.”

And that protection begins with the quarterback, particularly one with a willingness to accept contact.

“I will do a better job of protecting the football,” Vick said. “The fumble on the goal line, the guy just put his helmet on a good spot; he put his helmet right on the ball. I tried to protect it, but it came out. And I can’t do anything about it.”